January 25, 2016 • Article

January 25, 2016—The SEI has opened the nomination period for the Linda M. Northrop Software Architecture Award. This honor recognizes an individual or team using software architecture-centric engineering to improve organizational practices or software development. The award will be presented at the 2016 Software Engineering Institute Software Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Conference, which will convene May 2-5, 2016, in San Diego, California.

The winning entry will be selected based on the following criteria:

Architecture-Centric Practices. Application of architecture-centric practices leading to successful development and launch of a product or system

Leadership. Leadership in motivating others in an organization or in the community to adopt an innovative architecture-centric practice

Persistent Change. Product or innovative architecture-centric practice that produced a persistent change in behavior and results

Perspective. Emergence of a new or different perspective on architecture-centric engineering

Winners will receive free admission to , and the conference will cover travel and lodging expenses. The winners will also present their experiences and insights in an invited talk at SATURN and write a guest post on the SEI SATURN Blog.

The award is named for Linda M. Northrop, an SEI Fellow who led the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) program that was instrumental in the creation and development of the field of software engineering known as software architecture. SEI software architecture methods are today in wide use throughout the world, documented in a series of highly acclaimed books and disseminated by means of a software architecture curriculum and certificate programs. To date, more than 17,000 people from more than 1,400 organizations have attended courses in the SEI Software Architecture Curriculum, and more than 2,200 people have earned software-architecture-related certificates.

“When Linda Northrop retired from the SEI in 2015,” said Bill Pollak, SATURN 2016 general chair, “we wanted to do something to commemorate her contributions to the field of software architecture. Instituting an award in Linda’s name and making it a key component of the conference that she founded seemed to us to be a great way of doing that.”